NewsClick: The Latest Actor in a Century-Old Drama of Treason

WHY IS EVERYONE SHOCKED that something called Newsclick is on the Chinese payroll? In fact, Newsclick is merely a fragment of a clutch of such treasonous outfits. It just got caught spectacularly and was globally exposed by the New York Times. But anyone who’s clued into the politics, intent, methodology and timing of such “exposes” will instantly spot that these “investigative reports” are anything but innocent. To the extent that the NYT expose of Newsclick gives factual data that is in India’s national interest, it is useful — it is not for nothing that Nicholas Coleridge characterised the NYT as All the Cash that’s Fit to Print.

Newsclick is the latest exhibit of a familiar ideological phenomenon that continues to plague this blighted nation for more than a century. The ideology is Communism and national betrayal is its heartbeat.  

BEGINNING WITH M.N. ROY, every notable Communist traitor has been an earnest slave of a foreign Communist power. The damage that these generational ingrates have inflicted upon India is primarily twofold: (1) disrupting the internal stability of India through incessant violent agitations such as Naxalism/Maoist terror (2) colluding with foreign powers such as the (former) USSR and China. 

Till date, the greatest success of Communists has been the creation of an influential, nationwide enclave of India-breakers. For more than half a century after Independence, the Communists ran a parallel government by infiltrating almost all government institutions and patronising loyal private individuals and organisations. 

All this was initially enabled by none other than Nawab Nehru who Sita Ram Goel memorably characterised as an “incurable Soviet addict.” The Home Ministry back then was instructed to turn a blind eye to the large suitcases full of Soviet money which often used to land in the Prime Minister’s official residence. Chinese money too, soon, followed suit. For a chilling account of the whole thing, read Ram Swarup’s masterpiece, Russian Imperialism: How to Stop It.

Unsurprisingly, huge chunks of this foreign Communist cash were distributed to finance opinion-creation and influence-peddling in the academia and media. Overnight, Leftist ideological Kirana shops spurted throughout Delhi — think tanks, “research centres,” Government-aided private bodies, and “voluntary agencies” (what are today called NGOs). All these were lucrative avenues for wastrels and thirsty careerists who were willing to sell their soul and thereby, their country, for private gain. The eyewitness, Sita Ram Goel gives us a vivid portrait of this sick Delhi atmosphere: 

“… in May 1957, Pandit Nehru was at the  zenith of his power and prestige… The Second Five Year  Plan, patterned after the Soviet model, had been launched with great fanfare as the harbinger of a socialist era in India's history… these were minor compliments to the "greatest Indian after Asoka and Akbar”… A sycophant press in India…had built him up into larger than life-size. 

This was the heyday of delegations to and from the Communist countries, particularly the Soviet Union and Red China. Not a week passed without some notables returning from this or that Communist country, and making statements about the "wonders we have witnessed with our own eyes". At the same time, the Western democracies, particularly the United States of America, were being painted in the darkest colours…

This was also the heyday of what was known as voluntary effort for national development. Voluntary agencies had mushroomed in every field, all over the country… My professor of political science whom I met one day, advised me "to float my own racket, and to live lavishly ever after". 

Clearly, anti-India racketeering on behalf of brutal Communist regimes paid handsome dividends — the payment done both by alien powers and by the Nehruvian Government. Almost the whole of Indian media — barring honourable exceptions — was packed with such vipers. In fact, a senior journalist (still alive) once wrote defending China for its 1962 aggression as follows (paraphrased):  Nehru shouldn’t have upset Chou en Lai and invited the aggression.

BUT IT WAS REALLY INDIRA GANDHI who threw India’s gates wide open to Communists because her first tenure desperately needed their support. The story of how JNU was created is well-known. What is little-known is how her PMO and her closest circle of advisers were ideological Indians who took orders from Moscow and not from India’s Prime Minister. In fact, Asoka Mehta, once Indira Gandhi’s close ally, had remarked that “the woman would sell the country to Russia if she becomes the PM.” 

The Soviet suitcases of Nehru’s era had now grown both in size and number. 

But the issue was not limited to suitcases. Here is a classic piece by Arun Shourie on the Mitrokhin Archives revelations: 

"There can be no doubt at all that, as far as India is concerned — our governance, our national security — Mitrokhin's records point to the gravest danger… Even this briefest of brief accounts speaks of penetration by foreign agencies of departments of our Government, including intelligence agencies; of Mrs. Indira Gandhi's coterie… it speaks of funding of Left parties, of trade unions, of the Congress itself… it recounts the ease with which the KGB and the CIA were able to plant stories; it speaks of the ease with which, and the paltry sums for which the KGB was able to organize ''spontaneous demonstrations'' by Muslims…"  

Indeed, what has really changed from the 1970s to now? 

Remember the Indian forces on the payroll of breaking-India forces that were engaged to defeat Narendra Modi in the 2019? 

Remember the unceasing conspiracies and toolkits unleashed to dislodge PM Modi from 2019 till now, even as I write this?  

Remember the sinister MOU that the Congress party had signed with the Chinese Communist Party? 

And now, the Newsclick expose — the email thread initiated by Neville Singham which gives clear instructions to target the PM on CAA, farmers’ protests, etc?   

But back to the Mitrokhin Archives. Perhaps the most deadly revelation is contained in two instances. The first: 

"Oleg Kalugin… head of FCD Directorate K (Counterintelligence) in 1973, remembers India as 'a model of KGB infiltration of a Third World Government': We had scores of sources throughout the Indian Government — in intelligence, counterintelligence, the Defence and Foreign Ministries, and the police.' Kalugin recalls one occasion on which Andropov personally turned down an offer from an Indian minister to provide information in return for $ 50,000…It seemed like the entire country was for sale."

The Mitrokhin Archive also notes that forty Members of Parliament, editors of ten newspapers and four Intelligence officers were on its payroll. 

But here’s the most devastating revelation of all:

"… [Mitrokhin Archive] speaks of the [KGB’s] intervention in… our ''free and fair'' elections; it speaks of the confidence with which the agency manoeuvred to build up preferred successors to Prime Ministers."

Engineering regime change, in other words. And there is every reason to believe that one such indirect regime change operation was successful. 

This was the toppling of the Janata Government in 1980.

ON JANUARY 22, 1979, India’s ambassador to the US, Nani Palkhivala wrote an urgent cable to PM Morarji Desai. This is how it read: 

"Last week a source from the State Department here called on me and told me in strict confidence that according to American Intelligence, the Government of the Soviet Union had decided that they should work, as far as it lay in their power, to see that you cease to be the Prime Minister and he added that some chosen persons in the Communist Party of India who are pro-Soviet had already received the message. When I expressed my incredulity, he repeated that what he had stated was absolutely true even if I chose not to believe it."

The highly underrated but explosive book, The Morarji Papers, gives us detailed, firsthand information about the aforementioned operation. Let’s hear it from the horse’s mouth.

"Morarji says, “The information was difficult to believe. I don’t believe, any foreign country would so blatantly interfere in our affairs… Yet, Morarji did believe that the Soviet Union was supporting the Communist Party in India… The Soviet attitude towards the Janata Government becomes quite clear. They learnt soon enough that they wore not going to succeed in outwitting the Janata Government… But by 1978 when there were dissensions within the Janata Party and there was a distinct possibility of Morarji Desai being unseated, they (Russians) began to encourage the factions which, opposed Morarji… 

The suspicion that Madhu Limaye was instructed abroad of the strategy to be employed to get rid of Morarji Desai cannot be dismissed altogether. Then in March 1979, when Kosygin was on an official visit to India, George Fernandes was designated his Minister-in-waiting. George took the opportunity to request Kosygin an invitation to Charan Singh… 

Morarji says George, like the others, was an ambitious fellow and fancied himself as the first Christian Prime Minister of India. And that George and Madhu worked closely is a known fact…

Morarji is convinced that the Congress under Indira Gandhi has always been greatly influenced by Russian attitudes, which is why the Russians are happiest when Congress (I) is in power in India." 

The fall of the Janata Government is a subject for in-depth research and has immense potential to unearth stark truths. But it points to the same historical phenomenon: a Congress Government is the proven choice for countries that look to remote control India or to break it from within. As the Mitrokhin Archive and other material shows, from the beginning, its ministers were willing to pawn Indian interests to say, the USSR or China. It is also no coincidence that the maximum number of Pakistani terror attacks have occurred during Congress regimes. 

AS A NATIONAL POLITICAL FORCE, the Congress might have been bombed out of relevance after 2014. However, the enclaves of traitors that it has nurtured for about a century are fighting its political battles. Here is a fundamental point to consider:  Newsclick, Wire, Scroll, News Minute, Newslaundry, etc., and eminent traitors in the academia… all of them want the Congress in power… the Prime Minister has to be a Congress leader (preferably drawn from the Nehru bloodline)… their narratives do not even hint at a Prime Ministerial role for say, Stalin, Jagan Reddy, or Mamata.

Then there’s the question of the foreign funding of these nation-wrecking propaganda outlets. They can arguably tap into these foreign sources because of two primary reasons: 

1. The networks that Nawab Nehru had cultivated decades ago.

2. Their ideology which effortlessly connects them with the global Left-Liberal ecosystem patronised by the likes of George Soros, Pierre Omidyar, et al.   

And they shouldn’t be taken lightly. While their roots are deep and wide, their doggedness is lethal. In the analog era of KGB and CIA infiltration and rigging, large scale mind-manipulation was comparatively difficult. In today’s social media age, the nature of the beast has transformed in ways we are yet to fully grasp.

The Narendra Modi government must prioritise this area and take proactive steps of cutting off the roots that lead to the continual emergence of breaking-India outlets like Newsclick. 

Continued negligence of this deadly ideological malaise will have long-term consequences for the Hindu civilisational nation. It’s still not too late. 

We can close this piece with what Sardar Patel had written to Ram Swarup, commending his work on combatting the Communist menace in the 1940s: